A01=Soma Mei Sheng Frazier
Author_Soma Mei Sheng Frazier
Category=FBA
Category=FXB
Chinese-American
college dropout
coming of age
compassion
contemporary adult fiction
contemporary fiction
cross-country road trip
culture
Dartmouth
debut
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
friendship
Great American road trip
heritage
humor
ivy league
kindness
literary fiction
mysterious
off the beaten path
overcoming the past
political
San Francisco
secret
Syracuse
Uyghur culture
Product details
- ISBN 9781250872708
- Weight: 248g
- Dimensions: 230 x 151mm
- Publication Date: 22 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Recent Dartmouth dropout Mei, in search of a new direction in life, drives a limo to make ends meet. Her grandfather convinces her to allow her customers to pay under the table, and before she knows it, she is working as a routine chauffeur for sex workers. Mei does her best to mind her own business, but her knack for discretion soon leads her on a life-changing trip from San Francisco to Syracuse with a new client.
Handsome and reserved, Henry piques Mei’s interest. Toting an enormous black suitcase with him everywhere he goes, he’s more concerned with taking frequent breaks than making good time on the road. When Mei discovers Henry's secret, she has no choice but to confront him. What Henry reveals rocks her to her core and shifts this once casual, transactional road trip to one of moral stakes and dangerous consequences.
An original take on the great American road trip, Off the Books is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age story that showcases the resilience of the human spirit and the power of doing the right thing. The spirit of Frazier’s characters will stay with readers long after they have arrived at their destination.
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier's work has earned nods and awards from numerous authors and entities. Her stories have been published in Glimmer Train, ZYZZYVA, the Mississippi Review, and Hyphen, amongst others. She relocated from California, where she was a San Francisco Library Laureate, to New York, for a professorship in creative writing and digital storytelling at SUNY Oswego. Soma has taught at the University of Silicon Valley, the Sarah Lawrence College Summer High School Writers Program, the University of San Francisco, Oakland School for the Arts, Holy Names University, Gavilan College, and Valhalla Women's Correctional Facility-and she worked at KQED, a premier national public media source in the Bay Area.
